except in a body, they are told:

“These attributes are analogous to will, hearing, sight, and speech: whatever consequence follows in one case follows equally in the other.”

Likewise, when philosophers and their like who deny the attributes say:

“Affirming these attributes entails a plurality of meanings in Him, which in turn entails that He is a body or a composite,”

they are told:

“This is just like your affirmation that He is a necessarily existent being, subsisting by Himself, and that He is at once the intellective subject, the intelligible object, and the intellect; the pleasurable object, the one experiencing pleasure, and pleasure itself; and the lover, the beloved, and love itself, and so forth.”

If they say:

“All of these go back to a single meaning,”

they are told:

“If such a reduction is impossible, the distinction is invalid. If it is possible, the same may be said of those attributes. There is therefore no difference between one attribute and another.”

The discussion establishing the attributes and invalidating the claims of those who deny them has been set out at length elsewhere.

The purpose here is to show that Allah’s perfection is known by reason and that its opposite is excluded from Him. Basing affirmation and negation on this method accords with both reason and revelation, whereas basing them on the other method does not—contrary to what these theologians have claimed.

Most philosophers and theologians agree that Allah’s perfection is established by reason, and the philosophers call it “completeness.”